I’m not opposed to finding work via advertisements or “help wanted” listings. I’ve never been a fan of the bid boards, but I know they work for some people. I know that countless writers benefit from the job listings here at FWJ.

However, I don’t spend a lot of time tossing my hat into the ring with hundreds of other applicants for advertised writing positions. I’ll do it occasionally when a particular call for a writer really appeals to me, but it’s not my preferred way of generating business.

I know there are plenty of writers out there who would really like to be busier, so I thought I’d talk about an approach that has worked for me. It’s not revolutionary or anything, but it doesn’t seem to get as much attention as other strategies. I like creating my own gigs.

Here’s the plan, in its simplest form:

Find someone who has a great product or idea–something that’s right in your wheelhouse or in which you see remarkable potential.

Think about how your skills could help them.

Pitch them.

Example One: Occasionally, I’ll watch press releases roll along the river of a popular distribution site’s RSS feed. I’ll look for releases that involve interesting topics or ideas. I’ll pay close attention to those that evidence a need for a much better copywriter. The contact information is right there on the release. The pitch is simple in terms of offering them more effective releases and it doesn’t take long to investigate their web presence and to see what else they might need.

Example Two: Have you ever been searching for something that you wanted or needed and then discovered a real diamond in the rough of a website? Of course, you have. When I find these sites, I will follow up with the owners, telling them how we might be able to work together to improve their business.

I know. It’s pretty simple.

But here’s the interesting thing… It works.

You might think that the percentage of contacts that turn into business would be minimal. That’s not the case. The conversion numbers are surprisingly good. I’m relatively sure that my contact/conversion rate in these situations is higher than most people’s success rate when responding to “writers wanted” ads.

I believe that one reason writers aren’t in higher demand is our collective shortcoming in marketing our gifts and their value. We have a tendency to wait until people see a need for us when we should be telling them why we’re so damned valuable. When you’re rainmaking, that’s exactly what you’re doing.

The trick, of course, is the pitch. You need to be able to show value to the prospective client. You need to demonstrate an understanding of what they seem to be trying to accomplish as well as a vision for what they should be trying to accomplish. You need to make yourself accessible and to let them know that you’re friendly, helpful and something other than a moneysucking mercenary with a keyboard.

I generally make contact with an email. I’ll follow up with a phone call. It’s not a chore. It’s fun. After all, I’m not hoping to find an ad for a job that would be tolerable. I’m isolating opportunities that interest and excite me.

Give it a shot. Take some time to find someone who isn’t necessarily looking for you but who could really use your skills. Pitch ’em. See what happens. You might be surprised.

Last week I wrote a post critical of revenue sharing sites. I maintained that, generally speaking, writing for sites like Associated Content, Bukisa, ListMyFive, Infobarrel and the like yielded a poor return on a writer’s investment of time and energy.

Some commenters argued that revshare sites were a credible “first step” for new freelancers. A few maintained that it was possible to generate a sizeable passive revenue stream via revshare contributions. I’m still convinced that my position is correct in most cases and I may eventually get around to answering some elements of those objections in future posts.

This post, however, will address another set of comments. More than one reader remarked that it would be nice to hear about some alternatives to revshare operations. I thought that was a more than valid request. While a pure critique may have value, it’s almost always better to combine one’s attack on one option with a workable alternative.

So, if you think I might just be right about the limited utility of revenue sharing sites, here are a few things you might want to do instead. Consider these options the next time you’re about to tap out another article in hopes of capturing a percentage of someone else’s ad revenue.

Build and Improve Your Own Writing Property

If you don’t have your own website, you should. If you’re serious about establishing yourself as a credible freelancer, you should have some presence on the web. Obviously, the quality and scope of that presence will be even more important if you plan to focus on ‘Net-based markets. Your site is a means by which people can find you, learn more about you, discover your skills and contact you. It’s important.

Consider spending some of the time you’d otherwise dedicate to revshare contributions to building or improving your existing website and related elements of your online presence. Admittedly, these efforts don’t directly generate revenue. However, they do create the foundation you need to secure better gigs. In the longer term, it’s a much better investment than revshare work.

Build and Improve Your Own Other Properties

Instead of funneling your awesome articles to a non-appreciative revenue sharing site, keep ’em for yourself. Build a site or blog dedicated to whatever non-writing topic that happens to trip your trigger or in which you have expertise. If you’d love to be a subject matter writing specialist, hone in on that subject area.

You can buy a domain for under ten bucks. You can get hosting for under five bucks per month. It’s free to install and use WordPress if you’d like. It’s a teeny tiny investment that can really pay off. Even if you’re not interested in aggressively promoting and monetizing the site, you can still point potential clients to your work, making it a showcase for your writing skills and knowledge base. If you do put forth a little effort, you can probably start earning just as much from your posts to your own site as you can with your revshare submissions.

Spend the Time Marketing Yourself or Pursuing Paying Gigs

Tom Chandler, the head honcho at The Copywriter Underground, recently commented on a post at my site. The rant in question objected to the way people automatically tend to make assumptions about one’s position on all freelance writing issues based on one’s position with respect to a single topic. I illustrated my complaint by referencing some of the comments left at my anti-revshare post. In his comment, Tom made a point about the world of lower-paying gigs that certainly applies to writing for revenue sharing outlets:

I firmly believe that investing the same time spent writing $10 articles in new biz development (cold calls, client searches, etc) offers better ROI down the road.

He’s right, too. In most cases, the return on smart self-marketing has the potential swamp the value of revshare contributions other lower paying gigs. If you’re ready to give up on collecting fractions of Adsense clicks, you might want to spend your time working to secure more substantial opportunities.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I think lower-paying options are a mistake for all people under all circumstances. That will probably become clear as I keep moving through my list, but I just wanted to point that out.

Take a Crappy Writing Job or Two

The alternatives presented thus far don’t directly put cash in the coffers and I know that’s an issue for many people. If you’re ready to give up on the revshare game but aren’t ready to wait to bring in at least some cash, reach out and take a few gigs that don’t pay particularly well.

If you do, you’ll make some money. Not much, but it will be as much as you’d make with revenue sharing contributions in the short run (actually, it will actually be a little more). Plus, it will give you something you don’t get by writing for the revshare sites–a real human contact on the other end of the transaction.

If you’re completely new to the game, the process of working with an individual will help you get experience with client communication, invoicing and all of the other processes that will become a part of your freelance writing business. That low payer may be willing to spend more money with you when he or she sees how damn awesome you are. He or she may spread the word to others who could use a writer. He or she can certainly write a positive review or testimonial you can use in your own marketing efforts. The nickel and dime material you write will show up somewhere, and you’ll be able to point future prospective clients in its direction. And trust me–those articles will carry as much, if not more cache, with future potential clients than something tossed up at AC or Infobarrel.

A few el cheapo gigs can put a foot in the door while dropping a little change in your pocket. The gigs at the shallow end of the rate pool may not be what you want in the long run, but if you need a few quick bucks and something that passes for experience, they’re probably better than an article at Bukisa.

Those low-pay gigs aren’t hard to find. If anything, they might be too easy to find. The Internet marketing forums are crawling with potential clients and Craigslist is overflowing with “I need ten articles about _____”-style clients.

Work for a Slightly Better Mill

Instead of writing revshare articles, you could always write for a content mill that pays you a little more than the potential of future money. It will only take you about thirty seconds to find a year’s supply of articles and blog posts decrying sites like Demand Studios and other pay-per-piece content mills. I’m not interested in answering the complaints. I’m not interested in defending this option, either.

This option and snagging a few lower-paying gigs may not be great ideas for everyone. Some folks may benefit more from some of the other ideas. I’m just saying that it makes more sense than writing for most of the revenue sharing sites.

Volunteer Your Talents

If your goal is experience and an opportunity to create materials you can use to prove your competency to others, consider volunteering your writing talents to make the world a better place. Offer someone engaged in a charitable pursuit a little pro bono copy.

No, it doesn’t pay. Then again, revshare doesn’t usually pay much. You’ll be trading a little hunk of dough for a much heftier hunk of feeling good, I guess. Oh, and pointing others toward this material will undoubtedly work better than showing them your ListMyFive posts.

I was going to put “Try Your Hand at Affiliate Marketing” on the list, but decided it wasn’t a great fit. Even stripped down versions of so-called “bum” article marketing strategies require a great deal of non-writing work. It’s a credible option for those who want to learn how to make it work, but it just didn’t feel like it was part of the same world, so to speak. That applies to a few other online moneymaking plans that involve content production, as well.

Well, there you have ‘em–a few alternatives to writing for revshare sites for new writers. I think they’re all credible alternatives to using your professional skills to supply user-generated content to sites willing to pay you only a fraction of the ad revenue they generate and that have so many other shortcomings.

Last week, I wrote about unanticipated successes. One of the stories I relayed involved an article I wrote while experimenting with a site that pays based on residuals. A few years ago, I wrote a brief no-brainer of an article for a revshare site that has subsequently generated several hundred dollars in earnings.

I mentioned my overall disdain for involvement with most revenue sharing sites in the front-end of my post and thought I’d go into a little more detail about why I feel the way I do. I’d hate to think that my story of an exception to the rule would encourage anyone to dive headfirst into the revshare waters.

Here are four reasons freelancers shouldn’t be contributing to revenue sharing sites–and why there are occasional exceptions to the anti-revshare rule.

Note: Just to be clear, I’m talking about sites that will accept your article submissions and will subsequently pay you based on a percentage of ad revenue the article generates, the number of page views it attracts or some other secret formula. That includes a massive number of sites including Associated Content, Bukisa, Infobarrel and others. While sites like Squidoo and Hubpages may have additional utility to some Internet marketers, many writers utilize them as “pure” revshare outlets, as well. Though some revshare sites (like Associated Content) may offer a nominal up-front payment, the criticisms still tend to stick.

PAYMENT UNCERTAINTY

If you’re writing for a hobby and aren’t actually worried about using the income you generate to pay the bills, revenue sharing sites may occasionally provide you with a little pocket money. If you feel an overwhelming urge to express yourself on a pet topic and think you might expand your audience via use of a revshare site, you might also make a little dough while standing on principle. Who knows?

Nobody knows. And that’s a problem.

Those of us who actually rely upon our earnings to pay the bills should be acutely aware of what we’re making and how much time/effort/etc. it requires. When you fire off an article to a revenue sharing site, you have absolutely no idea what you’ll make.

Sure, you can make predictions based on past experience. Overall, you may be able to project your like per article earnings over any given time. However, making safe assumptions requires a sufficiently large sample size and an adequate period to assess results. So, you’re going to be sinking a fair amount of time into a revshare experiment before you can even do that. And once you have done it, you’ll realize that those averages are just that–averages.

Some articles may perform admirably. Others will turn out to be nearly useless. In time, you’ll begin to think you’re developing a strong feel for what works and what doesn’t. You’ll improve your keyword analysis and selection skills. You’ll learn to write the “right” way for the sites. Then, you’ll discover that the highs and lows are still far removed from the average.

My lucky article may very well earn over a grand before it dies. Others in the same niche with superior keyword optimization (produced at the same time as the lucky one) have earned next to nothing by comparison.

Why do some kick ass while others lurk unseen in the back of the Internet’s junk drawer? It could be just about anything. Maybe someone more serious than your revshare mill of choice decided to go after the same keyword. Maybe your article caught a lucky backlinking break. Perhaps Google just hiccupped and the algo failed (or succeeded, I suppose) to your benefit. The list could go on and on for pages, but all of the potential explanations share one thing in common–they’re out of your control.

So, unless you’re planning on doing a lot of tracking, refining, and writing for the revshare sites, youR likely earnings for any individual piece of work is virtually impossible to predict.

Again, that’s fine if you don’t care about money. If you do, it’s an ugly state of affairs.

SITE CHANGE RISK

When you sell your work in a revenue sharing environment, you’re almost telling the buyer to pay you whatever they’d like, whenever they’d like. You’re also agreeing to trust them to present their site, themselves and your article in an effective manner. That’s a whopper of an agreement.

What happens when your favorite revshare site decides they need to keep more of the cash their content is earning and they opt to change their payout system? You’re at their mercy. Check the terms to which you agreed when making a submission. In a best case scenario, you may have the right to yank the material off the site. Whoopee. Where are you going to sell it now that it’s been out there for months or years and has been scraped by a million lousy sites operated by those who really don’t have a grasp on intellectual property right? Are you just going to try to dump it on another revshare site? Check their terms with respect to material being previously unpublished. Oh, and remember these five reasons why the whole strategy tends to stink in the first place, too.

What happens if the revshare site decides to make changes in their structure, promotion or design and Google isn’t happy with them? Tough luck, Bub. What if those changes result in inferior ad placement and fewer click? Sorry. What if the whole site shuts down or changes direction? You’re back to square one.

When you start performing those incredibly imperfect revenue projections, they don’t account for these “risk of ruin” situations. Once again, unpredictability is a huge problem.

CRAPPY PAYMENT

Revshare sites don’t pay much. If they paid a lot, they couldn’t make money for the people running them. That’s not an insult to site operators. It’s a fact. You’re getting a percentage of your contribution to a business that’s based on volume–and unless you’re a two-handed army, you probably aren’t a volume producer.

I know the idea of creating a passive income stream is enticing. The thought that you could eventually just sit back and watch the residuals pour into your bank account is the stuff of dreams. However, it just doesn’t happen absent insane volume.

Every day, I see people talking about how to maximize their revshare earnings. They provide tips for others who’d like to give it a shot. You could write a five-volume dissertation on revenue sharing strategy.

Do you know what I don’t see very often? Credible evidence that anyone is really making a living from revshare article money. That’s not because the big winners are keeping their success on the down low. It’s because the success stories are so few and far between.

Look at your flawed per article earnings projections. Now, do the math. How many of those revshare articles will you need to write to be in a position to develop a truly meaningful (and, we should remember, always at-risk) revenue stream? Big number, right?

Now, ask yourself how much you could make per article if you wrote them for a reasonable payment. Multiply that number by the total you’d need for your dream passive income stream? One last question: Would you rather have that amount of dough in your coffers months or years earlier or would you prefer to roll the dice on the value of your high volume output?

That shouldn’t be a hard question to answer.

EXTRA WORK

The revshare hint-givers will tell you that you need to promote your articles in order to encourage the page views necessary to generate a reasonable income. When you’re playing the revshare game, you’re not just a writer. You’re an Internet marketer. Unfortunately, you’re marketing someone else’s product for a potential share of advertising revenue.

I don’t know about all of you, but my workload is heavy enough without becoming a backlink builder for a third party in hopes that it might make my little article slightly more valuable.

When I look at some of the strategies I see people using to promote their revenue sharing articles, I scratch my head in utter amazement. If those individuals built a simple landing page for a product with an affiliate program and promoted it with equal vigor, they’d make much more than they do helping the revshare mills.

Even if you put that alternative aside, anyone playing with revshare must account for the time and energy expended in the promotion of their content when determining whether process is anything other than silly. That means taking opportunity cost into consideration. What could you do instead of promoting your content and would it be more or less valuable than what you’re doing? Just about anything is going to be a better deal, by the way. That includes walking your neighbors dog for the change he found under his couch cushion.

EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE

Sometimes there are moments where a revshare article may make sense. However, most of them don’t apply to folks who consider themselves to be writers exclusively.

In some cases, they can be used as a means of backlink development. They serve as a paying version of article directories like EzineArticles.com. Of course, that is limited only to those sites that don’t over-restrict your ability to successfully link out to the site(s) of your choice. One should also do that only if they can find a series of revshare sites that don’t insist on completely original content–those links, after all, aren’t that valuable considering the sites upon which they appear and the likely Google mojo of your article’s page. This exception would also include those who are experimenting with variations of “bum marketing” and other article-driven marketing strategies.

In other cases, one can use a series of revshare articles as a means of adding to an overall presence on the web. It’s not that valuable for a freelance writer, but some businesses may find it worthwhile to improve the number of search results featuring company names or non-competitive business-specific keywords. That would also apply to those who might use the revshare outposts as a means of pushing back other search results as part of an overall reputation management plan.

There are rare cases where one may have surplus content due to a client’s order cancellation or some other bit of weirdness where dumping the stuff on a revshare site or two would be a better option than letting it rot. However, there are usually better options available–even for those who aren’t interested in using the content to create their own sites.

There may be situations where the revshare component of providing an article to a website is secondary to the exposure it may provide. If a top-notch site that attracts the specific audience you’d like to reach is willing to toss a little coin at you, that wouldn’t be the end of the world. However, if it’s not the kind of place for which you’d write GRATIS anyway (i.e. a wonderful guest-posting opportunity at an authority site in your niche), the revshare probably won’t be enough to tip the scales.

IF YOU INSIST ON DOING REVSHARE WORK

If, for some unfathomable reason, you just can’t bring yourself to give up on the idea of writing articles for revenue sharing sites, at least try to participate in the most sensible way possible. That would mean:

Spending very little time writing each article

Streamlining your keyword analysis process

Targeting the best revshare sites

Looking for opportunities to use the content in multiple revshare settings

Automating the bulk of your article promotion efforts

Even then, in the immortal words of WOPR, “The only way to win is not to play.” At least that’s the way I see it.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Writing for revenue sharing sites is not the road to riches. It’s not the road to a middle class existence. It’s not even the road off food stamps for most people. There are better ways to make more money.

This is coming from someone who has experimented with the option and who often finds himself on the opposite side of the “fair rate” debate with those who argue against the so-called exploitation of writers. In other words, if I’m telling you it’s a bad idea… Well, I really think it’s a bad idea.

I can’t wait to hear from those who do the revenue sharing thing to tell me how I’m wrong. I would love to find out if they’ve “cracked the code” and make a solid living from a revshare passive revenue stream. Really. All I can tell you is there are plenty of folks talking about how they’re working toward that goal and not too many who have reached it.

To me, it’s all a matter of making the smartest possible choices with the most important finite commodity you have–your time. On an hour-per-hour basis, it looks like there are much more lucrative things one could be doing.

So, am I wrong on this? Let me know. I can’t imagine that I’m too far off-base, but I’m more than willing to entertain arguments to the contrary.

So, you want to write web content for more than one-third of a penny per word. Or you’re doing the Demand Studios thing and would like to branch out. Maybe you write for some of the other content mills and think it‘s time to cut out the middle man/woman. Maybe you’ve been working the bid boards and are tired of giving them a cut. Maybe you haven’t received so much as a “thank you” for anything you’ve written, but you’re ready to get things rolling and you want to deal with real-life clients who’ll toss work your way on a regular basis.

You’re not alone. I know that because I get emails asking, “How in the hell can I get decent clients?” on a regular basis. I know that because I see folks quizzing discussion board participants with variations of the same question. [Read more…]

I was planning to write an incredibly long, detailed post about the not-so-wonderful world of writing for websites that operate on revenue sharing models.

Part of that post was going to discuss a throwaway article I wrote several years ago for a revshare site on a lark, just to test the waters. Due to a lucky combination of good timing, optimization for a virtually unexploited long tail keyword in a big money niche and what one can only describe as stupid luck, I’ve made approximately $600 from that article over the course of five years. It took me approximately five minutes to find the primary keyword (there’s that luck) and about ten minutes to write the simple article.

I’m not underpaid, but I generally don’t make $2,400 per hour for lousy little pen-named articles designed for content mills. I still chuckle every month when I see the mill make a deposit into my checking account.

Anyway, I wanted to mention that article because stories like those are one reason why so many people hop into the revshare world. Unfortunately, they’re flukes. Anomalies. Luck breaks. You can’t count on them. They don’t happen too often. I was going to put that particular article’s numbers up against the other four I wrote in the same week for that site long, long ago to illustrate the point.

I was plodding through the post about revenue sharing while listening to George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh and just as I started detailing the story of the miracle article, I found myself half-singing along with Ring Starr’s “It Don’t Come Easy”.

It don’t come easy,
You know it don’t come easy.

It don’t come easy,
You know it don’t come easy.

Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues,
And you know it don’t come easy.
You don’t have to shout or leap about,
You can even play them easy.

Well, in my case it did come easy. I goofed around as an experiment and made a big ol’ chunk of cash from writing that I’d objectively value at approximately nothing.

Some days, Starr’s lyrics do ring true for a self-employed writer.

However, there are times when it does come easy. The cosmic tumblers click into place and weird little miracles appear.

Accentuating the Positive

Instead of writing a post about the way things don’t come easy in the world of revenue sharing, I decided to write a post about the times things do come easy. I figured it might be nice to celebrate the crazy flukes and accidental victories instead of focusing on the ugly grind of making a living with a keyboard.

Here are my favorite easy moments… In no particular order:

The $600 Revshare Non-Masterpiece: This is the article mentioned above. A nearly effortless bit of experimentation continues to pay dividends years after its creation. There really is no logical explanation for why this article continues to earn and earn every month. Somehow, it continues to fly below the radars of those who work in the niche and Google, pumping out steady earnings for the content mill and me.

The Three-Page Report that Made Over $5,000. I was driving down the highway and a simple idea crossed my mind. Bum marketing (a simplified form of article-based affiliate marketing) was a hot topic in the Internet marketing world. I realized there was a very easy way to boost the value of the articles and to insure at least some up-front cash value for them. That relatively small cash payment could serve as something of an insurance policy for those who were writing free articles for directories in hopes of generating affiliate sales.

I came home, sat down and outlined the exceedingly simple process. I added introductory and concluding paragraphs, converted it into a PDF and posted it for sale as an information product on a popular IM forum with a little off-the-top-of-my-head sales copy. I set up a PayPal button and a quick automated download process for anyone willing to buy the guide. From top to bottom, it took about two hours.

The next morning, I woke up to over $2,000 in sales. Within three days, I made $5,000 off that simple idea. The almost equally awesome part was the fact that the folks who bought the report actually liked it. It didn’t take long for the concept to escape the confines of my hastily produced ebook and sales ground to a halt shortly thereafter. I wasn’t complaining.

The Luckiest Celebrity Blog Ever: I noticed that my wife was watching a TV show featuring a woman I had seen on another show the day before. Out of curiosity, I did some quick Googling and realized that her career was absolutely on fire and that she was poised for a major breakthrough.

At the time, I was experimenting with new keyword mining techniques and generating income via blogs monetized with contextual advertising. A few minutes later, I had claimed a Blogspot blog with a domain name featuring a common misspelling of the celebrity’s name and was setting it up with a number of quick posts that were little more than silly notices of other articles about the celebrity, combined with a brief excerpt of the source material and a link to the original source. It was a very crude homemade news aggregator, in a sense.

The site started making about $1 per day in Adsense earnings, so I kept adding occasional little posts. The celebrity’s star power increased to the Nth degree and earnings went up, up and up. Soon, it was making a solid $10 per day. Then $20. Then $30. I outsourced one hundred additional news aggregation-style posts with some of the earnings, loaded them up and set them to drip feed at a rate of two per week. The investment paid for itself within two months.

That site made a small fortune before people with real resources, strong content and a commitment to doing things the right way realized that a crummy little Blogspot blog was ranking in the top three for a series of high volume searches. The competition didn’t find it hard to knock me off, but that blog put a stack of fat Adsense checks in my pocket before they did. For what it’s worth, the site still generates about a buck every other day and I haven’t so much as looked at it in over two years.

Common Traits

All three of those weird winners share a few common traits:

They happened because I was willing to experiment. If I had been wholeheartedly committed to following THE plan and only THE plan, they wouldn’t have happened. This serves to remind me that keeping an open mind and trying new things can be a lot of fun and a source of profits.

They all defied duplication. Efforts to replicate the results with similar projects invariably fall short of those anomalous originals. I did have some luck with other Adsense-monetized blogs (enough that I still get a check every month from Google) and I’ve sold a few other information products here and there that have been well worth my time, but I’ve never come close on another revshare article. This reminds me that luck matters more than we’d probably like to think.

All three of these happy accidents share one other trait. They happened three or more years ago.

And You Know it Don’t Come Easy

I think that last fact may contain the most important lesson my three examples offer. In the last few years, we’ve witnessed an absolute explosion in the number of people trying to make money online as writers, Internet marketers and everything else imaginable. I think it’s an overstatement to say we’re near a saturation point, considering the web’s continued rapid growth, but the online world is certainly more crowded and competitive today than it was a few years ago.

I really do believe it was easier to mix some rudimentary knowledge with a little skill and a chunk of action to generate healthy chunks of cash back in the “good old days” (which aren’t particularly old at all, truth be told). As I think about other cool little bursts of luck I’ve had, most of them happened during or before 2008. I know I haven’t stopped experimenting with new ideas and I’d like to believe that my skills have improved. I know my knowledge base is more expansive.

So, either I’ve hit a long luckless streak or it’s getting tougher to hit the big time with little effort due to increased competition.

I wanted to go from a somewhat negative post about the doomed nature of 99.99% of revshare writing efforts to a positive reflection on the times when the money rains upon request. Instead, I think this post could still end on a somber note.

These days… Well… It don’t come easy.

Your Glory Days… And a Prize!

Ah, who wants to end on a down note? Maybe it can come easy. Even if it doesn’t, it did at some point and that’s worth a little party, right?

I open it up to you, the FWJ readership. Let’s hear your stories of glory days, your memories of times when things that shouldn’t have been successful turned into moments of accidental greatness.

Maybe it was the unedited, typo-riddled query that still landed you a plum contract. It could’ve been the time you sent off a piece of work you personally hated that the recipient loved so much you developed a profitable on-going relationship. Perhaps you had a magic revshare moment, too.

I don’t know what’s happened to you, but I have to believe you’ve had times when it all came easy.

Tell your story.

Oh, and just to encourage participation, I’ll tack on a prize. The best story wins a free copy of The Concert for Bangladesh on DVD. You get Harrison, Clapton, Preston, Dylan and even Ringo in their full bearded 1971 glory!

Let’s hear your tales of mysterious moneymakers, accidental brilliance and those unexplained moments of magic when very little effort resulted in a massive payoff of some sort.

Those of you who paid for premium cables channels in the 80s may remember Angel. It was the tale of a girl who’s momma left here alone with a $100 bill one day who decided to make a living on the streets. She had a secret life–High school honor student by day, Hollywood hooker by night.

Brett Giddens has a slightly less dramatic secret life. Then again, he’s a real person. He’s an Oklahoma high school basketball coach by day who spends his nights singing in small casinos as an Elvis impersonator.

I have a secret day/night life, too. Mine doesn’t rival the Angel story and it isn’t as fun as Giddens’ tale.

Sometimes, in the evening, I write things that pay next to nothing. And I do it just for fun. [Read more…]

So, the Internet Content Syndication Council is concerned about the allegedly abysmal quality of mass-produced articles flying out of the content mills. They’re so disturbed by the practices and output of the mills that they’re working on a series of quality standards and have discussed the possibility of certifying “legitimate” content.

I can think of few sillier endeavors.

Money Talks

The ICSC thinks ad spends should go to the producers of rock-solid content. That wouldn’t be a bad argument if they could convincingly demonstrate that an investment in top drawer material would yield a superior return on investment compared to buying space with the content mills. If they could prove the link between “quality” content and higher profits, they wouldn’t even need to worry about the mills. The market would dismiss them and they would wither away, as do all non-competitive business models.

Unfortunately, they don’t appear to be winning the argument. As Mike Shields noted, the content mills are generating massive traffic numbers and they supply advertisers with highly-targeted eyeballs very efficiently. Companies spend dough to make dough, not to support an organization’s interpretation of what constitutes proper writing. When they see a positive ROI with the mills, they take their wallets to the mills. It’s that simple. Right now, they’re lining up at the mills.

Constantine von Hoffman noted that there are already sources of content that would undoubtedly meet any standards the Council might cook up. We all know that The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc. are there for us. Their content tends to rank well, too. Oh, and they get good traffic. Yet the money isn’t flowing in their direction–at least not enough of it to keep the big boys plump and happy. Why do these quality sources with trained professional editors and acclaimed writers struggle while an army of cut-rate freelancers and the mills who pay them thrive?

Welcome to today’s economic realities. You might think they’re ugly. You might not like them. They are real. The mills are delivering bang for advertising bucks. As long as they continue doing so, all of the quality credentialing in the world won’t make a difference.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the big ROI lies far, far away from the mills. If all of those people are putting their cash in the wrong spots, all the Council needs to do is to present those facts. If they could conclusively demonstrate that spending with sites that carry a higher grade of content would increase profitability over the alternative, the alternative would be gone. Poof. No need to credential a single word.

A Problem with Standards

The Council’s initial proposals with respect to content quality don’t really do anything to change the character of the allegedly rotten mill pieces. They quickly recognized that the subjective nature of writing quality made it impossible to set standards.

The point of the guidelines is not to evaluate content itself — which would be a subjective task — but to develop procedures companies can use in creating or publishing content, said Tim Duncan, executive director of the ICSC.

More specifically, the four principles push for proper fact-checking, clearly stated dates of publication, timely corrections and updates, and clearly displayed credentials of the information sources, according to a release from the council.

When someone writes the 9,278th content mill article about removing stains from your carpet, she can probably manage to maintain factual accuracy. The mill can slap a date on the page. She can write up a paragraph discussing her unquestionable qualification to address a common consumer issue. If someone points out a mistake, I suppose corrections could follow. That still won’t address common mill-related gripes like

Redundancy and lack of originality

A lack of writing talent

The fact that the article will play well with Google

The standards themselves are ridiculous because they fail to address the real problem ICSC members have with the mills–it’s stealing business, money and power from established industry veterans. However, if they really went after mill content with the degree of transparency required to ‘fess up to that motivation, they’d be left with no alternative but to engage in obvious, untenable cries to credential or approve content on the basis of whether or not it’s something they like.

They may be trying to get to that point through the backdoor. Matthew Ingram mentions that another proposed guideline is to ““ensure that all content submitted is vetted by established and qualified editorial reviewers.” Whatever that means. Established by whom? When? What qualifications? Why? What standards should these eminently qualified professionals use? The questions are legion.

It Starts with a “G”

The Council is tilting at the wrong windmill in the first place. The content mills exist and currently succeed because they understand something others don’t: Search. They know that money word starts with a “G”.

Google.

The mills kick ass on the search engines right now. Thus, they get the eyeballs. Thus, it makes sense to spend with them. If people didn’t rely on search to find the kind of information supplied by mills and their writers, no one would want to partner with them.

Content mills succeed in search because (1) they’ve figured out the long tail of search, (2) they’re creating content in response to expressed market desires (i.e. providing information for which people are already searching), (3) know how to build G-friendly sites, (4) capably exploit the limitations of Google’s search algorithm and (5) recognize that Google is interested in providing relevant search results, a goal that doesn’t necessarily line up with providing quality results.

Nonetheless, the Council is making content standards a priority instead of fighting Google. When they do address the issue of search with respect to mills and the perceived deficiency in content quality, they do so very carefully. Do you think they’re more comfortable griping about the mills than they are in actually confronting the core cause of mill popularity?

In all honesty, unless the action comes from Google itself …there will be little that will be done. Consumers will have to ultimately judge what content they like or dislike and then advertisers can say whether or not they want to be linked to it.

And for that to happen, someone will need to show Google the err of its ways. Here’s a hint: The only persuasive arguments are the ones with dollar signs attached.

I’ve personally maintained that a change will, in time, come from Google. That won’t happen because some insider Council dislikes crappy content, though. It will come when actual users grow sick of search results that don’t measure up to their expectations and when Google starts losing numbers because of that dissatisfaction and/or the appearance of alternative means of information organization and acquisition.

Until then, all of the standards, credentials and concern about the allegedly lamentable state of Internet content won’t make much difference.

Note: I’ve intentionally avoided discussing whether the Council’s initial assumption–that content mill articles carry the stench of inferiority–has any basis in reality. That’s because (1) I’m not really interested in another discussion of quality, mills and the folks who write for them and (2) it doesn’t really matter–even if the Council were right, their approach wouldn’t fix any problem.I’ve also intentionally avoided trying to portray the Council as a group of old-schoolers who just don’t “get it” or who are simply scurrying about, looking for a way to preserve their incomes. While it would be convenient to run with that notion, I don’t think it’s quite fair. Quite.

You get the client. That’s good. You do the work. That’s good, too. The client pays you. Even better.

Now, it’s on to the next gig! That’s bad.

Well, it’s not really bad to move on to another gig. It’s just bad to look at assignments as one-off opportunities.

Most of the freelancers I know don’t make that mistake. They follow up with previous clients. They make calls or send emails, trying to scare up a little more work. They do a decent job of reminding the client to get in touch the next time he or she needs something.

That approach will create return customers and it’s something every freelancer should be doing. In fact, writers should have an organized system to maintain regular contact with past customers. [Read more…]

Here’s how I do it. It may not be a good way for you to do it. Then again, it might be advice that transforms you from a feast/famine disaster into a consistent earner.

I wake up and work. I work until I earn a predetermined sum. Then, I can decide to work on speculative projects, engage in marketing or watch re-runs of old sitcoms and marvel at how many technical schools buy ad time on afternoon broadcast television.

I thought some of you might find my approach interesting.

So, here it is, my system for making a living as a writer.

Get a Number Part One: How much money do you need to make per month? Do the math and get the number. Don’t forget to consider taxes. Don’t use a budget that’s hopelessly optimistic or stupidly inflated, either. You want THE number.

Get a Number Part Two: How much money do you want to make per month? Most of us would prefer to have an income that exceeds our current needs. Assuming you have some desire for upward mobility or increased stability and security, you feel that way, too. Come up with a goal number. Leave the billionaire daydreams behind for now, though. Think in terms of what would really satisfy you.

Some Simple Math Part One: Add your need number and your goal number together. Now, divide by two. Let’s say you need to clear $5,000 per month and the idea of making $10,000 really resonates with you. $5,000 + $10,000 / 2 = $7,500. We’ll call this your target number. It’s more than you need, but less than you want.

Some Simple Math Part Two: Take your target number and divide it by 22. That’s the approximate number of working days in a month. If we use the hypothetical target number above, that would equate to roughly $340. That means one would need to make $340 every working day to hit the target number. We’ll call this your daily number.

Hit Your Daily Number… Every Day: Wake up in the morning and start working. Keep working until you hit your daily number. Once you hit the number, feel free to do more or to focus you remaining time on marketing efforts or other endeavors that will make it easier to hit that daily number in the future. If you do earn more than your number, resist the urge to apply the difference to the next day’s mark. You want to create a habit of hitting your daily number every day.

Don’t Apply Overages: So, you had a day that exceeded your daily number. Congratulations. Don’t start carrying over that “surplus” and applying it to future days. Every day is new. You wake up zero and you don’t stop until you hit your daily number.

Don’t Count Pre-Payment: You landed a gig that supplied you with $1,000 up front. That’s great. However, it does NOT wipe out your daily number. It doesn’t touch your earnings requirement at all, because you haven’t done the work yet. Think in terms of the actual value of the work you’re doing every day, not in terms of how much you’ve been paid already or how much you may earn at completion. Writers have a nasty tendency to mellow out for a few days after they collect a nice payment. That’s understandable, but it throws things out of whack in the long run. You must train yourself to hit your daily number every day (or as close to it as humanly possible).

Do Correct Deficiencies: You called it a day even though you fell $100 short of your daily number. It’s okay. It’s going to happen. Life is like that. This system forgets overages and starts new every day. That’s because it’s always nice to end a cycle with more money than you planned to earn. The system is less forgiving of deficiencies. If you fall short, distribute the deficiency over the course of the next three working days. In the hypothetical case of being $100 short on a $340 daily number, that would mean you’ll need to generate $377 per day for the next three days. Make the adjustment every time you fall short.

Don’t Count Potential Income: Don’t count chickens that may or may not decide to lay eggs. If you’re spending time on a personal project that you believe COULD be eventually be worth $X, so be it. Feel free to dive right into it AFTER you hit your daily number with activity that WILL put money in the bank.

In Case of Massive Failure. You missed your mark by $100 one day. The next day, you missed it by $80. The following day, you were $100 short again. Then, you completely screwed up and had a day that fell $200 short. Now, the amount you need to earn in order to cover the deficiencies is huge. You’re screwed.

That can happen. If it does, revisit the amount of money you’ll need to make per day to hit your goal number for the month. If the resulting figure is reasonable, proceed using it as your daily objective. If the number isn’t reasonable–and that can happen if you have several bad days–do the same thing with your need number.

If that isn’t reasonable… Well, you’re going to have a short month unless you managed to put together a few overage days (remember, we don’t count any daily surpluses) earlier in the month. If you never exceeded your daily goal and you’re not going to hit your need number, it’s time for some serious reflection about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

You may need to find ways to tighten your budget. You may even need to consider making your living in some other way. If you can’t consistently meet your needs with your earnings, you’re either going to be living on the street or in deeper debt. Neither option is particularly wise or attractive.

Why This System Works

It forces you to realistically assess the amount of work you’ll need to do.

It breaks down income generation into manageable, easy-to-understand chunks.

It prevents you from inadvertently resting on your laurels during good times and it doesn’t let you off the hook when things are tough.

It encourages you to earn more than what you need to squeak through life (both by establishing a daily target in excess of expenses and by refusing to allow you to get soft just because you had a few days with overages).

It gives you a legitimate shot at your “dream” number because you don’t use daily surpluses to relieve the daily “pressure” to hit your mark.

It helps you to train yourself to be a consistent earner and eliminates the dreaded feast and famine cycle.

Challenges to Working the System

Sometimes, you might not have enough work lined up. The solution? Find it fast. Then do it. Some days, you may need to resort to unattractive millwork or other low-paying efforts to hit your mark. You might think that sucks. Maybe it does. Nonetheless, it’s necessary. It insures that you’ll earn what you need to earn and won’t leave you short of money if you spend time on pursuing new opportunities that don’t come to fruition.

You’ll need to figure out how to determine the value of the work you do. In some cases, that’s easy. If an article pays $50, you know that you can put $50 toward your number upon its completion.

In other cases, it’s tough. Bigger projects require research time and other elements. You’ll need to estimate the total amount of time necessary to complete those projects and then estimate the equivalent hourly earnings associated with them. That way, if you put in two hours on a larger project, you’ll know how much it’s “worth” when computing your daily earnings.

It’s hardcore. It’s unforgiving and it’s relentless. I guess that makes it a little like life, huh?

What about Moving Up?

If you’re spending chunks of light days churning out cheap stuff to hit your mark, how are you ever going to escape the rut? How are you going to move up the ladder to better paying jobs?

Basically, you’re going to pursue those better opportunities and you’re going to market yourself after you earn your daily bread. That might make for some long nights in the beginning. However, it’s going to produce a series of days that allow you to pay all of your bills, too.

If you’re moving up the pay ladder, you can expect things to get easier as time passes because those efforts will pay off. Eventually, those tough days of grinding will begin to disappear.

I know some people wills say one is better off doing more self-promotion, gig hunting and marketing on the front-end in order to make it easier to hit the daily number in the future. That can be true. Unfortunately, those efforts don’t always pay off quickly, if at all–and you still need to eat until they do. By setting a daily objective that you WILL meet every day, you eliminate the risk of freelance famine. In time, you’ll even build up enough of a cushion that you’ll be able to cut yourself a little slack now and then, if you’d like.

So, FWJ amigos… Opinions? Insults? Accolades? How do you do it? Discuss.

To varying degrees, I’ve believed all of those oft-repeated recommendations.

Today, I’m questioning conventional wisdom.

I’ll spare you my long tale of personal navel-gazing and the various mini-epiphanies that led me to reconsider many aspects of my business model over the last few months. Let’s just say that I’ve decided to change a number of things and that decision forced me to take a brief hiatus from many of my usual online activities.

As I slogged through the last month, I was a little worried about not having a fully operable website (it’s still awaiting completion and a re-launch as I write this). I worried about not blogging. I wondered what a dramatic decrease in community involvement and social media might do. Mainly, I wondered how in the hell I was going to make a change if I wasn’t actively marketing myself in the process.

My decision led to a very rough patch as I moved from one set of policies and procedures to another. There was a major cash flow hiccup as I moved from Model A to Model B. Not pretty, but temporary.

Now… Well, things are good. Hell, they’re better than ever. And that’s happening even though my domain currently points to a little Blogger.com blog that says, “I’ll be back soon”. It’s happening even though I haven’t been blogging. It’s working without much professionally oriented social media utilization, without spending a great deal of time interacting with the freelance writing community and without an intensive marketing effort.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not as if things are just magically happening. I still work. I just haven’t been involved on those fronts lately and it really hasn’t had a negative impact on my business. If anything, my abandonment of the conventional wisdom is making me money right now by providing me with more time to focus on writing.

It’s possible that I’m an exception to the rule. The conventional wisdom may be conventional because it’s true for most folks. I realize that I started in this field a few days after YouTube launched and that I have a network of contacts that new people don’t have. If I was starting today, what I’ve been doing probably wouldn’t work.

All I can tell you is that I basically took a month off from this “world” and nothing horrible happened. I had a brief and pronounced cash flow dip (which I could have avoided if I had enough patience to roll with Model A for an extra month), but it was brief.

I’m here to tell you that there’s no law requiring you to blog twice per day. There’s no rule demanding a professionally designed website. You can live without Twitter and Facebook if you’d like. You don’t need to comment on this post to show that you’re a part of this community in hopes that will somehow put money in your pocket.

Everything is optional.

Maybe I’m just really slow. Maybe I just wandered off into some very high weeds and became slightly lost . This post may seem like common sense to many of you. This whole learning experience has been eye opening for me, though.

I’ve long laughed at conventional wisdom, but I’ve held close to it in many ways with respect to building my business. Not anymore.

I’ve decided it’s about my/your plan and not THE plan. Again, everything is optional.

This realization has been liberating. Now that the world is spinning a little slower, I can get back into the things I love and I can ignore the rest without worrying that I’m going to somehow doom myself. I know better. I slammed on the brakes for a month and lived to tell the happy tale.

When I get my site fixed to my satisfaction, I’ll slap it up there. I do have some blogging plans. I do plan to be active in certain discussions. I’m making those choices based on what I want to do, however. I’m not making them because I think they’re essential.

A good plan is a good plan. Even if it runs contrary to conventional wisdom.